t me say to the hundreds of young people in this house this morning,
before you give your heart and hand in holy alliance, use all caution;
inquire outside as to habits, explore the disposition, scrutinize the
taste, question the ancestry, and find out the ambitions. Do not take
the heroes and the heroines of cheap novels for a model. Do not put
your lifetime happiness in the keeping of a man who has a reputation
for being a little loose in morals or in the keeping of a woman who
dresses fast. Remember that while good looks are a kindly gift of God
wrinkles or accident may despoil them. Remember that Byron was no more
celebrated for his beauty than for his depravity. Remember that
Absalom's hair was not more splendid than his habits were despicable.
Hear it, hear it! The only foundation for happy marriage that ever has
been or ever will be, is good character.

ASK FATHER AND MOTHER'S COUNSEL

in this most important step of your life. They are good advisers. They
are the best friends you ever had. They made more sacrifices for you
than any one else ever did, and they will do more to-day for your
happiness than any other people. Ask them, and, above all,

ASK GOD.

I used to smile at John Brown of Haddington because when he was about
to offer his hand and heart in marriage to one who became his lifelong
companion, he opened the conversation by saying, "Let us pray." But I
have seen so many shipwrecks on the sea of matrimony, I have made up
my mind that John Brown of Haddington was right. A union formed in
prayer will be a happy union, though sickness pale the cheek, and
poverty empty the bread tray, and death open the small graves, and all
the path of life be strewn with thorns, from the marriage altar with
its wedding march and orange blossoms clear on down to the last
farewell at that gate where Isaac and Rebecca, Abraham and Sarah, Adam
and Eve, parted.

And let me say to you who are in this relation, if you make one man or
woman happy you have not lived in vain. Christ says that what He is to
the Church you ought to be to each other; and if sometimes through
difference of opinion or difference of disposition you make up your
mind that your marriage was a mistake, patiently bear and forbear,
remembering that life at the longest is short and that for those who
have been badly mated in this world, death will give quick and
immediate bill of divorcement written in letters of green grass on
quiet graves. And perh